As night closed in on Nedd Brockmann’s quest to run 1,000 miles (1,609.3km) in 10 days, the loneliness of Australia’s favourite long-distance runner could be felt by every member of a 1000-strong crowd who crowded into Sydney Olympic Park on Sunday to cheer him home.
The former tradie turned endurance athlete was in agony – and frequently, in tears. By 5pm on the 10th night, Brockmann, 25, from the New South Wales central west, had covered 1,322.62km. He had run every day for 16-20 hours a day around a 400-metre athletics track. He had raised over $1.3m in donations for charity. But his body was failing him.
“Nedd has been in pain every day of this challenge,” said support team leader James Ward. “He’s got issues with his shins, knees, shoulders. It’s got to the point where he needs us to put him in a wheelchair every morning to get him on the track. But so long as the donations keep coming in, he thinks all the pain is worthwhile.”
By Sunday, the blisters on Brockmann’s feet were raw and bleeding. Despite wearing shoes three sizes too large to combat the discomfort, there were times he could barely walk, let alone run, in his effort to meet the astonishing target of four marathons every day.
“It is so relentless that track … it has been hell … and that’s why I love it,” Brockmann told his followers in a social media clip. By then his “Uncomfortable Challenge” had drawn 2.7m views to TikTok for what did prove uncomfortable – yet undoubtedly inspiring – footage.
Brockmann had his eyes on a record set by the greatest ultra runner of all time, Yiannis Kouros, who ran 1,000 miles in 10 days, 10 hours, 30 minutes and 36 seconds in New York in 1988. It was a typically audacious target and, by Sunday, it looked out of reach. But with the crowd cheering from the bleachers, Brockmann soldiered on.
“The record might be out of reach for Nedd but he’s not stopping,” said Ward, who met Brockmann in 2020 when the 21-year-old sparkie ran 50 marathons in 50 days to raise more than $100,000 for the Red Cross. “Nedd is an incredible character. When he hit $1.3m in donations today he burst into tears. Then he kept on running.”
Brockmann first captured the hearts of the nation in 2022 with an extraordinary 46-day run of 4,000km across Australia that raised $1.85m for We Are Mobilise, an outreach program combatting homelessness. Six weeks after he set off in Western Australia, a crowd of over 10,000 people cheered the cult hero across the line at Bondi beach.
This challenge was shorter but steeper – and far more gruelling. “Yiannis Kouros’s feat of endurance is simply mindblowing,” Brockmann had written on Instagram ahead of setting out. “However, if you’re going to do something, don’t go in half-assed, throw everything at it. Everything.”
Over the past 10 days, the former electrician has certainly done that, eating and sleeping at the track in a tent under the grandstand. Brockmann has been mostly running at night to avoid the heat, and sleeping by day, and stuck to a strict refuelling schedule.
His mother, Kylie, and father, Ian, have been cheering his every step, and boxing champion Harry Garside and comedian Hamish Blake have turned up at the track to run beside him.
On day eight, with with the record slipping away, Brockmann changed tactics. Instead of tackling each 100-mile (161.1km) in 20-hour blocks virtually non-stop over a day, he began to work in “17-hour sessions”: running big miles, resting a few hours, then going again.
With 12 hours to go, Brockmann needed to run 280km by Monday 14 October at 3:30am AEST (and 35 seconds) to claim the world record. But the record paled before the higher cause of raising money for the homeless. “He’s had 20,000 individual donations so far, mostly Mums and Dads and kids, rather than big corporations,” reckons Ward. “He’ll keep going into Tuesday, even Wednesday, until he hits 1,000.”
Beyond 1,000, Brockmann is encouraging workplaces, schools, gyms and groups of friends to embark on their own uncomfortable challenge for charity in coming weeks.
“This isn’t just about endurance or attempting to break a world record – I want it to be a rallying cry for people who want to have a crack, to stand together, and make a difference,” Brockmann said.
Brockmann’s attempt has been streamed on TikTok Live.
